Small digital cameras have become commonplace on portable telephone, communication, entertainment, and media devices. There is a corresponding increase in the use of cameras for security, navigation, safety, and other uses. Two cameras directed at the same scene from different positions provide stereo vision allowing for depth perception. The accuracy of the depth perception can be improved using more than two different cameras. An array of cameras or image sensors mounted to a single device can also enable many other compelling 3D user experiences, including temporal resolution and increased dynamic range. A variety of different portable photographic, computing, and media player devices can be adapted to integrate camera array technology on their platforms.
Image disparity refers to the difference in the visual direction of two or more points in space. The shift in the position of a pixel in one image (a reference image) with respect to another other image is known as the disparity. A disparity determination calculates the correct shift per pixel by trying a range of possible shift values, e.g., d=[0, . . . , maxD] through an image matching process.
Pixel correspondences and disparity are used in a variety of 3D computer vision applications, e.g., 3D depth reconstruction, 3D object segmentation, 3D object detection and tracking, view interpolation, super-resolution, etc.